Page 100

Indiana

Bryan pulls over and waits for the officer to get out of the cop car and approach from the shoulder.

Michael Kohberger is in the passenger seat, a buffer between the officer and his son.

If Bryan fears the worst, he hides any inner turmoil. His face is pale, as usual. But his hands are on his lap, relaxed.

The sheriff’s deputy is disarmingly cordial as he asks for Bryan’s license.

“You were right up on the back end of that van. I pulled you over for tailgating. Is this your car?”

Bryan nods.

“Where ya headed?”

Now Michael injects himself into the conversation, which goes strangely circuitously.

Michael: “Well, we’re coming from WSU—”

Sheriff’s deputy: “What’s WSU?”

Michael says, “It’s Washington State University.” Then he explains there’s just been an incident there involving a SWAT team.

Bryan interjects: “I go to the WSU university, basically.”

No one has answered the deputy’s question, so he asks again: “So you’re coming from Washington State University and you’re going where?”

Michael tells him, “We’re going to Pennsylvania.” He adds conversationally and with emphasis: “We’re slightly punchy from hours—days!—of driving.”

Sheriff’s deputy: “What did you say about some SWAT team thing?”

Michael: “There was a mass shooting and everything…”

Sheriff’s deputy: “Interesting.”

Michael: “Well, it’s horrifying, actually.”

Sheriff’s deputy: “So y’all work at the university there?”

Bryan: “I actually do work there.”

Michael (with pride): “He’s getting a PhD.”

Sheriff’s deputy: “Yeah, I hadn’t heard about that incident… just yesterday or…”

Michael explains that just an hour and a half ago, they learned that a SWAT team was called in to deal with a gunman hostage situation at WSU. The situation is “still wrapping up.” He says he thinks they did shoot somebody.

Bryan again interrupts his dad. “Not sure about that, actually.”

This conversation has gotten far, far away from tailgating.

The cop has got other things to do today.

“Interesting,” he says.

He lets them go.

Not ten minutes later, the Kohbergers hear sirens again. They are still on I-70.

This time it’s the Indiana State Police.

Again, the trooper explains he’s pulled them over because Bryan is tailgating.

If Bryan senses anything strange or threatening about this second stop, he hides it well. This time Michael looks slightly nonplussed when the officer appears at the passenger window.

But again, the officer is quick to let them go: “I’m not gonna give you guys another ticket or warning if you just got stopped. Just make sure you give yourself plenty of room. It’s all about how fast you’re going, okay?” Then he asks, “Where y’all headed?”

When they answer, he laughs. “That’s a long haul. You guys scared of airplanes?”

For weeks, months, years, in fact, after Kohberger is arrested, it’s reported that the Indiana stops were not random. It’s reported that the FBI already had Kohberger in their sights. That the FBI had a single-engine plane tracking him. That the FBI hadn’t looped in Moscow to what they knew.

Many articles mention this, and Chief James Fry gets irritated every time he reads one.

Because it’s not only off base; it’s completely nuts.

He’s pissed that the only leak, the only leak in the entire investigation, came not from any of the people who worked directly with him but, he believes, from the Pennsylvania branch of the FBI.

“So tell me this. If they can’t keep their mouth shut that we’re getting ready to arrest a person… do you think they can keep their mouths shut about a plane tracking the killer all the way across the United States?” he asked sarcastically.

Yet again, in his view, the media knows nothing and wants to make a buck off something. “It makes a great story,” he said wryly. It’s also completely untrue.

“If that truly would’ve happened and I would’ve found out about it, you would’ve probably seen the roof of the police department come off.”

The boring truth of it is, as far as Fry knows and as a spokesperson for the FBI has, unusually, stated on the record, the stops in Indiana were random.

The timeline of the investigation indicates that law enforcement had not yet homed in on Kohberger on December 15.

Brett Payne hadn’t even heard the name “Bryan Kohberger” until the FBI phoned on December 19.

He didn’t try to obtain warrants for Kohberger’s phone records until December 23.

It was only in the days right before Christmas that the threads connecting the touch DNA on the knife sheath, the right model of white Hyundai Elantra, and its new license plate and owner came together—and then the phone records all pointed to Bryan Kohberger.

On December 15, when the Kohbergers were pulled over, law enforcement still didn’t have him.

The Kohbergers arrived in Pennsylvania on December 16 without being stopped again, and Fry’s team was later able to see that the car had reached home.

But in that moment, Kohberger was still safe. He was still below the radar of Fry’s team.

Although that was changing by the minute.